January 2011

The January 2011 edition covers Connectivity and Microprocessors, Microcontrollers & DSP, as well as Electronic Manufacturing & Production.

The first article in Connectivity, by Christian Vacchiano and Marco Radeticchio at Telit, considers eCall (a challenge for Telit), which refers to an interoperable in-vehicle emergency call service that has to be introduced and operated across Europe. The second article in this feature, by Dr Michael Heimlich at AWR Corp, describes Applied Wave Research's Automated Circuit Extraction. This is regarded as an innovative response to the overuse of EM as a design tool, as it reclaims parametric design for the user by creating netlist-based representations of complex interconnections. at a fraction of the time it would take EM tools to create S-parameters.

Microprocessors, Microcontrollers & DSP presents a single article by Kristian Saether and Ingar Fredriksen at AVR: A new breed of microcontrollers for 8/16-bit applications. The article shows that with AVR XMEGA, an excellent combination of high-end peripherals, good performance and ultra low power consumption may be obtained.

Four articles are contained in Electronic Manufacturing & Production. First up in this feature is a review of the IP8330 - from information supplied by Vivotek - which is a security camera with supreme night visibility. Several graphics are included that demonstrates the ability of near IR in total darkness as well as in low light conditions. The second article in this feature, by Paul Newman at Semikron, reveals how compact vehicle power systems can keep high currents under control in electric vehicle applications. Then, Dr Martin F Schlecht at SynQor considers a two stage approach to highly efficient DC-DC converters with super-wide input voltage ranges, before specialized interconnection solutions from Belden are reviewed in a short article from information supplied by Jaycor.

Do enjoy.